That's it. Hyouka ends. Just like that. There was no confession. There was no kiss. Not even a hand-holding scene. But it was alright. Hyouka was never about romance in the first place. The show was revolving around "mysteries". Or so they said.

However I didn't watch Hyouka for the mystery. Nor did I watch it for the shipping faggotry. I watched it for its high production value, especially in the art department. Kyoto Animation did a fine job with the animation.

The mystery aspect in Hyouka was kinda weak. Rather than mystery-of-the-week ala Scooby Doo, I'd rather describe the mystery in Hyouka as The Curious Case of Chitanda Eru. I think the only interesting case was the one at episode 19. The rest were bland, if not dumb.

I think Hyouka would work better if it was about Oreki and Sunohara Satoshi solving various mysterious around the school rather than focused on Chitanda's unnecessary curiousity. And Mayaka would be a completely irrelevant character.

Well, while I won't say it was a completely waste of time, I must admit that Hyouka didn't meet my expectation I had at the start. At least the visual was great. Out of a 1-10 scale, I'm gonna give this series a 7 at best.

This morning I discovered from my Twitter feeds that Tokyo Game Show 2012 started today. Next thing in the feed was a trailer for the most anticipated game in TGS 2012 for me: Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. I immediately stopped everything I did at that time and started watching it. Words cannot describe how excited I am after watching the trailer.

From the trailer its expected release date is November 29, 2012 and the price tag will be 5,980 Yen. Now all I need is Level 5 and Capcom to confirm western release of this game and I'll buy 3DS right away. Pretty please with cherry on the top.

I'll sell my soul to them just in case.

Next trailer is Ace Attorney 5. Our good 'ol defense attorney in blue suit will make a comeback in this game:
HE'S BACK! HE'S BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

And he's certainly not a hobo.

From the trailer there are two things I wanna ask: since this game chronologically set after Apollo Justice, what happened after the end of AJ? Why is Phoenix returning to the court scene? Will characters from AJ make appearances? Fuck it those are three questions but I do not care.

In his comeback, Nick will be accompanied by new assistant (well sort of) and she certainly doesn't seem like an amateur to me. I hope she will be as entertaining as all the assistants before her (Maya, Ema and Kay) inb4 Trucy is a boring sidekick.

This logo screams "JUSTICE". Don't you feel it?

There's no confirmation of the release date so I guess it's another year of waiting. And again, I hope Capcom doesn't pull another scumbag stunt like they did with Ace Attorney Investigations 2. Please Capcom, don't ruin anymore franchise. I'm still upset about the new Devil May Cry.

My face after finishing Alternative

Wow. That was my first reaction after finishing Muv-Luv Alternative, thus completing the Muv-Luv trilogy. I feel like I just experienced one of the most epic tale ever told in visual novel medium. Everything about Alternative was just exceptional. It really lives up to the expectations.

If you've never heard about the franchise, let me tell you briefly about it. The main story consists of three titles: Muv-Luv Extra, Muv-Luv Unlimited, and Muv-Luv Alternative. Extra narrates the life story of normal high school boy Takeru Shirogane. It's just a typical harem story full of its hijinks and cliches. His life turned 180 degree in Unlimited, after he somehow ended up in alternate world where there exist aliens called BETA which raped (har har!) the humanity so hard. For more info about these two titles read my Muv-Luv review.

It's safe to say that the purpose of Extra and Unlimited are just to set up the settings and characters for Alternative. The story of Alternative was built with Unlimited as its base. In Alternative, Takeru found out that he was thrown back to the beginning of Unlimited but he retained his memories of the events happened in Unlimited. He then tried to prevent what happened in the ending of Unlimited. But it was easier said than done.

The exact moment when everything just went tumbling down

The first half of Alternative was some sort of new game plus for Takeru as he was already familiar with all of the events plus he kept his trained body so he never got in the trouble again. The story almost same as the first half of Unlimited but with minor changes. At one point, the story changed into a new direction. New events kept coming and coming. And boy were they horribly depressing.

Yes, as expected, Muv-Luv Alternative has this depressing tone all over it. Well maybe it's not as grimdark as let's say Saya no Uta but it's still depressing nonetheless. While Extra is funny, Unlimited has heavier atmosphere but still lighthearted, Alternative has this sense of helplessness. You can't do anything with its story. You just keep watching horrible things happen and happen again but you can't stop it. For me most of this feeling came after experiencing the infamous PTSD arc.

The amount of mecha actions and battle scenes were satisfying. I once said that I was disappointed with the lack of real battle in Unlimited. Fortunately Alternative paid it off with its incredibly animated mecha battles. Honestly I've never been a mecha fan in my life. But after playing Muv-Luv I can't deny that those TSF designs were sexy as hell. Especially the Takemikazuchis.

The soundtracks are superb. They're very high quality orchestra music. I still got a goosebump everytime I listen to the OST. Well I am listening to them as I type this and it makes me pumped up as hell. I love them especially the battle themes (there are bunch of them). Also, the OP was done by JAM Project and it's gar as hell. I never skipped the OP once in all my playtime.

"However, by that point you'll have been torn to pieces."

Well, before this post gets too long I'll let it finish with a word of encouragement for you to read Muv-Luv as soon as possible. Especially if you're a fan of science and giant robots. Honestly I'm not even a fan of both but I still enjoy it like a motherfucking ice cream on a hot summer day. I give Muv-Luv Alternative a perfect 10/10 for all the effort it gave to entertain me in the best possible way. Thank you age for this amazing visual novel and thank you Amaterasu for translating it. I'll never forget the experience of reading the Muv-Luv trilogy.

(Man, I don't know what the fuck I was writing. Please forgive me since I wrote this draft at 2 AM)

That laid-back atmosphere, relaxing music, and Junichi Satou in director seat... sure without a doubt this is a healing anime or iyashikei. Not to mention the OP and ED were sung by Round Table feat. Nino. Well, there's a bit product placement but at least it's not done hilariously like in a certain show.

As any other good iyashikei, this show features cute girls doing nothing but drink tea and talk. Oh, and ride bikes too. I don't have any complain with that. I always enjoy a relaxing anime. I do hope there's more of them in the future (good news Tamayura is getting 2nd season!)

Hi, long time no see. I've been not blogging for quite a long time. Most because of there's no relevant thing to write about, since I'm not really up to date to the current airing anime. I've been following the Muv-Luv franchise just recently and that's all I've been doing for these weeks. I'm still in the middle of Alternative, btw. Anyway, enough about me. Let's talk about Ace Attorney movie. Well, it's been out on cinema in Japan since February, but the DVD was released just recently.

As you may (or may not) know it, I'm a HUGE fan of Ace Attorney series. I've played all the game in the series, played fanmade games, read the manga, and many more. I love everything about this series. Its fanbase is one of a few fanbase that I'm not ashamed to be the part of it. So some cool people decided it's a good idea to adapt the first game in the series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, into a movie. The movie is directed by Takashi Miike (Crows Zero, Nintama Rantaro).

The film in general followed most of the trials from the game. However, it focused primarily on two trials: Turnabout Sisters and Turnabout Goodbyes. There's some significant changes in the plot but not that much. Most of the aspect from the game like presenting evidence, cross-examining the witnesses, or the famous objection are portrayed nicely in the film. The court part used sci-fi elements such as holographic image to show the evidences.

The characters, especially Wright and Prosecutor von Karma, are played almost perfectly by the actors. The character resemblance was a plus too. Also, it's nice to see they paid attention to some little things from the game like Steel Samurai and Blue Badger. It's not much but enough to make fans of the series smile. The music is pretty good. Most of the music were taken from the game and rearranged for the movie. Again, the fans will surely glad to hear the music. It might even trigger the sense of nostalgia among them.

Overall, it's a pretty good movie for the fans. It can be a bit tedious for person outside of fanbase but I don't doubt they can enjoy this movie too. I hope they're gonna announced the sequel soon. How I love to see that last case from the 2nd game.